John McCain isn’t a neocon; he just happens to believe all the same things. Just look at what his foreign policy adviser, Robert Kagan, told Der Spiegel:
SPIEGEL: Isn’t it true that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld took advantage of the outrage over the 9/11 terrorist attacks to strike Iraq? Is it even possible anymore to deny that the war was based on manipulation, exaggeration and flat-out lies? […]
KAGAN: In retrospect, we have to admit that Washington could have waited a while longer. That’s a different question. But I think it’s about time we moved beyond this silly conversation and these absurd conspiracy theories.
Of course, it’s no surprise that Kagan believes these things. He also believes that the Founding Fathers were neocons and that the Civil War was America’s “first experiment in ideological conquest.” We’ve seen a lot of right-wingers try to justify the Iraq War by arguing that it was part of a noble American tradition; Kagan, I believe, is the only one willing to justify it by arguing that the entire American tradition was as grubby and mendacious as the Iraq War.
Is it any wonder that people resort to bizarre conspiracy theories when people like Kagan exist?
Tags: John McCain, Robert Kagan
June 13, 2009 at 5:34 pm
[...] Cohen’s article, poorly written and tastelessly accompanied by a picture of the exploding Twin Towers, is notable only for two reasons. First, it’s linked to on Arts and Letters Daily (why?), so numerous smart people will read it. Second, it provides yet another example of a tendency so widespread we ought to invent a name for it: Dismissing a charge of political maneuvering for profit or ill as a “conspiracy theory.”… [...]